Re: Fwd: Transporting a Profile Drive

On Jan 11, 7:27 pm, Terry Stewart <te..._at_email.domain.hidden> wrote:

> Ok this is where it gets interesting.  The seller has popped the hood and
> there is a Segate 412 (10MB) drive sitting inside.  Someone has replaced
> the original Profile drive, yes?

No, not necessarily. The ProFile did use a mechanism labeled as 'ST412', but with a different version identifier string. The label on the side of the Apple HDA assembly will say "MLC3.9" after the serial number on the Apple variant. Patrick claims (and I have no reason to doubt him) that the stepper motor has a finer pitch than the vanilla ST412 and requires two pulses to step from track to track.

> I see from Patrick's IDEFIle site that people did replace these drives with
> a Segate 412.  I might even have a spare one sitting at home?

>From experience, you cannot replace the drive in a 10M Profile with a
regular ST412 - it will slam itself into the limit for about half the formatting run as it runs out of tracks.

> Let's assume the drive in there is broken.  Assuming it is and my drive at
> home is ok, how easy is it to instal a bog standard (spare) Segate 412.
> Is it just a case of low-level formatting it in a PC, then wiring it up to
> the Lisa and using some Lisa Office installation disks to format and
> install?

Again, I have never been successful (nor do I think anyone has) in replacing the 10M mechanism. If the Z8 microcontroller is a "piggyback" ROM version, you can replace the firmware with the 5M EPROM and format an ST412 to 5MB (wasting every other track). I've ressurrected a couple of 5M drives, so I know it works. If the Z8 is a masked-ROM variant, pickup a piggyback version on eBay and give a yell. Someone may know where the software is.

Until recently, it possible to low-level format only on an Apple ///, but Al Kossow put a bunch of new software on bitsavers that includes (I think) the Lisa-based formatter. I have no experience with this, so you'll be blazing new territory :-).

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